DOOM DeLUISE: So last week, Jim Doom and I watched the newest movie from DC Animation, “Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.” Big picture, overall, what were your thoughts? Better or worse than previous efforts from DC’s animation department?

JIM DOOM: Big picture, I’d say that I keep hoping for DC to learn from the faults of previous movies, I keep going into these movies waiting for this to be the one I enjoy, and I keep coming away from them hating them for the same reasons.

I feel like we are long past the point of broken-record status on these things, but once again, we’ve got a DC animated movie that thinks you can make a really stupid story mature by adding blood, death and sexual references.

I did feel like the animation was stronger in this one than previous efforts. In other DC animated movies, I kind of felt like they were stuck in the style that began with Batman: the Animated Series and continued on to the Justice League cartoons. I mentioned it as we were watching it, but the animation reminded me a lot of the style of Aeon Flux — much more fluid and lifelike, and less abstracted and simplified. I guess maybe it’s a little counterintuitive to act as if DC is progressing in a way that reminds me of an early ’90s cartoon, but I liked that.

Good animation wasn’t nearly enough to overcome the many many many flaws in this thing though.

DD: Well, y’know Mean Gene, I think you have a point about the animation, though I found it incredibly tiresome that everybody seemed indestructible, including Batman and Owlman. When the physical violence in the movie doesn’t have any sort of lasting implications, it’s just a bunch of punching, kicking, and dust clouds with no real importance.

JD: Yeah, and I think that’s just one of many examples of how these movies are dumbed down far beyond the point of being convincingly mature on any kind of intellectual level. Part of what makes Batman interesting is that he’s just a normal guy. Normal guys don’t have giant stone pillars dropped on them and walk away from it. You take away the normal guy aspect of Batman and he’s just another superhero in a cape.

But that gets at another problem with this movie — absolutely terrible characterization. (more…)

I’m slowly but surely finding my way through the endless stacks of manga.  Takehiko Inoue’s art has been by far the best I have come across in the manga that I have read or seen.  His work is the only manga that strikes me the same way that American style comics with great artists due.  The art by itself could sell his work but thankfully he also happens to be a talented storyteller.  I started reading his popular ongoing Vagabond series, which continues to impress me despite how tiresome it is to that so many manga involve swords in some form or fashion.  I suppose the sword is to manga like what spandex is to superheroes.  You just have to learn to sort of tune it out as it just part of the infrastructure.

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The fourth and final issue of the Beasts of Burden mini series came out this week.  I thought it a good time to look at the title as a whole as Dark Horse plans to collect the mini series and the original shorts that first appeared their horror anthology series into one hardback sometime in 2010.  I’m a long time fan of Jill Thompson’s art work and that was all the incentive I needed to check this out.

Beasts of Burden is about a group of mostly dogs and a few cats that help protect their town, aptly named Burden Hill,  from supernatural forces.  It’s classic horror comics just with talking animals as the good guys and a healthy dose of humor to keep things from being too dire.  One of the strengths I found with the book was the balance of the characters.  Each dog and cat have a distinct personality while taking advantage having them being different breeds so it’s easy to tell them apart.  Jill Thompson’s really shines through here.  It’s easy to see why she won an Eiser for best painter back in 2004 for the first anthology installment of this series.  While I think it’s great that Thompson has found success with her children’s books, I’m very happy to see her working on something that geared for a older audience.   (more…)

I’m finding it interesting how fractured Marvel seems of late from a creative perspective.  The negatives are more obvious especially with Siege bearing down on us, but there are some very clear positives within Marvel as well.  You have to dig a bit but they are there.  With that in mind I thought I would look at three of the books I have enjoyed from Marvel this past week.

X-Factor #200

X-Factor is a tough book to peg.  It unfortunately gets buried in the grab bag like list of X-books, even though it is different from the other books in the X-family.  X-Factor would probably be best described as writer Peter David giving strong character development to lower tiered characters from the X-universe.  Sadly the book has one major weakness that being unreliable and often poor artwork.  I think that makes the book a tough sell since readers have to look past rather bland art to see the strength of the book which is Peter David’s writing.  Issue #200 is a good jumping on point for new or lapsed readers.  It sets a new storyline involving the Fantastic Four where Valeria and Franklin Richards hire out X-Factor to find their missing mother Sue. (more…)

In a effort to get away from the usual frustrations of mainstream Marvel and DC, I turned to Image once again.  This week saw the release of the Olympus trade collecting the four issues mini series, and much like Chew the book did not disappoint.  Olympus centers around brothers Castor and Pollux.  They act as sort of agents on earth for the gods if anything escapes from Hades.  The story starts out with the brothers tracking down an escapee and sending him back to Hades but they forget to close the portal in time and much a bigger problem gets out.

Knowing that this was only a four issue mini series I expected the story would feel rushed as it had to pack quite a bit into a limited number of pages.  The pacing did not prove to be an issue as the story flowed at a nice pace, especially in the last half.  It’s a quick read but it doesn’t feel like a rush job.  It helps that the book plays off of Greek mythology, so in essence it has Greek continuity to act as back story.  Christian Ward’s art is rather unique.  The line work looks like the rough pencils many artists use to lay out a story before the proper art is done.  This could have easily made the art a mess that was hard to read.   (more…)

Captain America Reborn sure is bad.

It’s taken me five issues to confirm my suspicion that The Flash just isn’t for me.

It’s easy enough to read “The Flash: Rebirth” and think that maybe The Flash is just a downright stupid character based on utter ridiculousness, but that doesn’t take into consideration the longevity of the character or the fact that there are people out there who buy the books. That’s why I have to believe that there are people out there who think this stuff isn’t moronic, and that I just don’t get it like how my dad didn’t get my fascination with C&C Music Factory in 1990.

I feel like Geoff Johns is trying so hard to make this book drip with sugary sentimentality that he’s gone overboard and created some kind of comic book diabetes, in which any more sweetness will send me into fits. I get that Barry Allen is supposed to be like the nicest person ever. I really do get that. And I also have no problem with good guys who are also goody-two-shoes upstanding citizens. But I just feel like that’s all there is to Barry Allen 2009 — flashbacks to just what a swell dude he is. It’s as if his babysitting business hasn’t taken off like it should have, and DC really needs everyone to understand just how great he is as a human being.

I’m conscious of my sour mood toward comics in general lately, and trying to figure out if my displeasure with this series is because of the series or if it’s just a reflection of overall grumpiness. But there are a few books out there I’m genuinely enjoying, so I’m inclined to think it’s not me. Maybe it’s funnyman Ethan Van Sciver’s art. It’s kind of intense on a superficial level — lots of muscles and cross-hatching — but it just seems so stiff and lifeless. If anything were a visual metaphor for an overly sentimental and melodramatic script about a guy I just can’t bring myself to care about, this would be it.
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R.E.B.E.L.S. #10 came out more then a week ago.  I only just now got around to reading it and it was pleasantly surprise.  This is one of the Blackest Night ring incentive books that DC has been putting out, where you get a ring from one of the Lantern Corps along with the comic.  This book came with the Indigo Tribe rings.  Thankfully this issue of R.E.B.E.L.S. is written with the idea that new readers would be coming on board so it makes for a very good jumping on point.  You do not have to know anything about the characters or the book before reading this as the story provides all the important details and background information.  The series centers primarily around Vril Dox the son of Brainiac.   He recently lost control of his intergalactic peace keeping force LEGION  to Starro the Conquerer, who was revealed to be the power behind the face hugging starfish like mind controlling Starros.  Dox and the rag tag crew he put together are out to stop Starro from controlling the entire universe.  Durng all of this Vril Dox’s ex wife Stealth recently died in a attack by the Starro controlled LEGION robots.  She then comes back as a Black Lantern being quite unhappy with Dox thinking he was to blame for her death.  The back story proves to be quite interesting and everything is told well.  Andy Clark’s artwork is beautiful on this.  It is not only great from a technical standpoint but the facial expressions in his work really breath life into the characters.
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By Grant Morrison and Dave McKean
15th Anniversary Edition published in 2004 by DC Comics

This won’t be a traditional Library of Doom review because I imagine at this point in human history, 20 years after its initial publication, there are probably few people interested in a traditional review of Arkham Asylum. Prior to last night, I was probably one of the few remaining regular comics readers in 2009 who had yet to read this book, in spite of my good intentions. But last night, I had a 30% off coupon to use, so here we go.

Honestly I wasn’t all that excited by the main story. It was interesting to read, worth a little effort to think about, and somewhat pleasing to look at. I seem to have shackled myself quite a bit with this pervasive awareness of my place in the comics review timeline, but I’m just not sure I’m going to have too much to offer in terms of Unique Takes on This Story.

But that’s okay, because I ended up really enjoying the book once I got to the bonus materials. For the Anniversary Edition, DC has included Morrison’s script for the book, including some contemporary notes from the author. Sometimes I skip things like this, but I was underwhelmed enough by the feature presentation that I hoped I’d get a little good out of reading the appendix.
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In my secret, not very interesting real life, I’m a web “professional,” which is to say I spend eight hours a day fixing HTML code. My sweet, sweet refuge is XKCD, updated every Monday - Wednesday - Friday.
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